Seeing the world through the eyes of the Globe

05/27/2015

People who knew Martin Duggan as the elderly, avuncular host of a St. Louis PBS talk show also remember that he was a veteran newspaperman, the former editorial page editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

They may remember the Globe-Democrat as a conservative voice; they may forget, however, how reactionary, how out-of-step with the times, and how often foolish that newspaper could be.

In early 1983, the same year the Newhouse chain announced it was closing the Globe-Democrat, I interviewed Duggan for a profile of his newspaper’s editorial page. He was 62; I was 24.

He spoke about his reasons for only running columnists that agreed with the paper’s philosophy (“We don’t see that there’s anything to be gained by paying columnists to express views that are generally inconsistent with our own”) and his tendency to engage in personal attack (“People in public life are big boys and girls”).